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Saturday, 15 March 2014

Not all Milk and Honey

From what is portrayed here on my blog and seeing photos and information from other people who are working in Antarctica you would be forgiven for thinking we are the luckiest people on earth.

The truth of the matter is this place has one major flaw. The elephant that seems to be in the corner of every room is the realisation that coming here for work means spending large amounts of time away from friends and family.

Sure, we are being paid reasonable money to experience one of the most extreme and yet beautiful places left on earth. We have a chef that cooks meals for us 6 days a week. We drink free beer that is brewed here on station ourselves. We have lights in the buildings that turn on and off as we enter and leave. We have Internet, reasonable phone services, radios and GPS that are all open to any use. We are allowed to get out in the field, travelling over frozen sea ice on Honda quads and specially designed Hagglund over-snow vehicles for weekend trips away to fully equipped field huts. We have access to a regularly updated library and a cinema with reclining Italian made leather chairs. We have darts, pool, board games, Wii's, Playstations and a full set of musical equipment with more lighting gear than some touring bands have access to...

But none of this can fill the hole left by friends and family.

Everyone that travels down here for work realises this but it doesn't make it any easier when you realise what you are missing out on being away from home for such long periods with it being practically impossible to return home.

Congratulations to my sister Alyssa and her partner Rhys on bringing their beautiful daughter, Evie Rose Hortle into the world. You should be so proud, you three have bought everyone so much joy, I can only imagine how you all must be feeling!

Mat, Ash, Debbie and Paul living it large on the Hahn Ice 'Back in Nam'

Congratulations to Tim and Bianca McCall on their marriage. Looks like it was a perfect day!, you guys deserved it, well done!

Josh, why did you have to wait till I left to get Sofia rego'd again!? Haha!

Despite how privileged I feel living and working down here, not a single day goes by that I don't think of everyone back home. For all those people linked to someone doing work like this, keep it up, we all need it more than you realise!